A small wet man has called a General Election, and lots of people are looking forward to multiple Portillo moments.
For those too young to remember the 1997 General Election Michael Portillo was an unpopular cabinet minister who lost his seat to a young Labour candidate. It came to symbolise the crushing defeat the Tories suffered, and people for years after would ask – were you awake for Portillo? People fantasise about who might lose their seat in similar fashion – Rees Mogg, Mordaunt, Lee Anderson, Gullis.
This desire to see the Tories humbled is likely to drive high levels of tactical voting to get rid of as many Conservative /Reform MPs as possible.
But there is a 2nd kind of tactical voting that could impact the outcome; anti-Labour tactical votes.
Given the unpopularity of the Tories anti-Labour tactical votes seems an odd thing to discuss. Owen Jones recently launched a campaign called We Deserve Better, which encourages voters to support anti-Labour candidates, mostly independents or Greens. I, like many people, dismissed this as a load of rubbish. Owen Jones made a good living from a decade of Labour failure and a successful Labour Government doesn’t help his career.
And there is a good reason to dismiss WDB. If those voters who switched to Labour under Corbyn follow Owen Jones and change to Greens or Independent it is unlikely to have much of an impact – they live in seats which Labour held comfortably before Corbyn, and switching their votes won’t change that. I confidently predicted at the start of the year that the Greens would get no seats, and I still think that is the most likely outcome
But during the Mayoral elections we saw something very different.
Jamie Driscoll ran as an independent against the official Labour candidate in the North East. He was well beaten, but picked a lot more votes than I expected . This was because he picked up a tactical votes from Conservatives and other right wingers; he became the “stop Labour” candidate. Polling done by Better Together before the mayoral election showed Driscoll picking up as many votes from the Tories and even UKIP/Reform voters as he did from disgruntled ex-Labour.
There might not be enough Corbyn loving middle class lefties to get rid of Labour MPs, but if enough Tories and other right wingers joined in, it might make a big difference.
The main beneficiary of this could be the Greens. There has long been an assumption that Green Party voters are all left wing. There is some truth in it, particularly as they have hoovered up a lot of the Cobynite left who abandoned Labour because of their stance on anti-semitism.
But I have never been wholly convinced that the Greens are all lefties. Partly this is because there is a long tradition of right wing Green politics in the UK. The first pro-environmentalist manifesto was from the British Union of Fascists, and that strand of right wing greenism lives on through Zac Goldsmith and King Charles III. But also because in parts of the UK the Greens are a rather posh party whose main policies in local Government is to stop housing building, particularly social housing. The areas where the Greens do best in local elections are affluent areas with high house prices.
Green friends of mine might feel a bit aggrieved at such a sceptical depiction of their party, but the Greens aren’t just a convenient home for disgruntled ex-labour, but also a flag of convenience for Tories who see them as their best chance to stop Labour, and their plans for mass house building, particularly in parts of the country on the long list for new towns or garden cities. As the Tories have moved off to the right the Greens are a more alternative home for Tory rebels than Labour.
I am still quite not convinced that this is enough to give the Greens seats – without Caroline Lucas’s personal vote they will struggle in Brighton, where they recently lost control of the Council. Thagnam Debbonaire might be vulnerable in the new Bristol Central seat; her vote in her old Bristol West seat increased by over 20,000 between 2015 and 2017, the biggest “Corbyn effect” in the UK. Even if most of these voters switched to the Greens it wouldn’t necessarily be enough to flip the seat unless Tories switched to keep Labour out. If the Greens are to become an anti-Labour bloc uniting Corbynite lefties with reactionary Tories Bristol is their best chance.
The same same might hold true of independents, such as Jamie Driscoll in the mayoral race, who can make themselves the stop Labour candidate. Corbyn stands a decent chance in Islington, although much depends on how good the campaign of Praful Nargrund is.
Tories voting for Corbyn to give Labour a black eye might be an irony, but given the febrile state of British politics I wouldn’t bet against it.
It won’t be the first time
I am going to cover constituencies where the Muslim vote might cost Labour seats in a later blog, so I haven’t included them here.
In other areas (like Rochdale) you have anti-Labour tactical voting over Israel / Gaza but again, not enough to threaten more than a couple of seats. I think Galloway will lose his seat on 4 July as Labour have shifted to a more nuanced position and for many, their protest only needed to be made once.
I’m going to come back to Rochdale and similar seats in a later blog. I think Galloway will lose